Author: Lars Iyer

W. thinks of Trotsky in exile, having been expelled from the Central Committee, expelled from Russia, staying in Turkey, then Paris, then Mexico, writing articles about the betrayal of the revolution, about his hatred of Stalin.

He thinks of Trotsky receiving news of his relatives, killed one by one. His son, poisoned, his daughters, hanged; his brother, shot, his sister, exiled.

He thinks of Trotsky in his Mexican stockade, the sword of Stalin hanging over his head, dreaming of a new revolution, a supplementary one, that would set the Russian revolution back on its course …

W. thinks of Lenin, after his stroke, being wheeled along in his basket chair, being helped to speak again, to read and write, using alphabet cards and basic exercises.

He thinks of Lenin, his brain dying, a twisted half-smile on his face, no longer able to say the words peasant and worker, people and revolution.

He thinks of Lenin, with only a few months to live, regressed to his second infancy, suffering paralytic attacks and spasms, whispering the nonsense words, vot vot, to express agreement or disagreement, a request or to express frustration. Vot vot, vot vot …

Philosophy doubles up our suffering, W. says. Not its redemption, but its witness. Philosophy gives sense to suffering in communicating it to others. Speech, dialogue: that’s what overcomes futility. That’s what lays waste to the senselessness of the world.

The word, philosopher, is an honorific, W. says. It's a title that can only be bestowed by others. No one should ever call himself a philosopher. No one has the right. We become philosophers when we speak, W. says. When we address others on matters of importance. We philosophise when we dialogue, W. says. When we take responsibility for our conversation, and drive it to deeper depths.

But when philosophy has no home? When there are no universities in which philosophy can take shelter? The danger is, that we might forget how to speak. The danger is that suffering voices will cry in the darkness, and there will be no one to respond.

Philosophy: will we have known what it was?, W. wonders. Will we have understood what it might have become? No, they will never destroy philosophy, not entirely. Philosophy will survive so long as people suffer, W. says. But philosophy without an institution, philosophy without the university: what will it ever be but a cry of suffering, pure pathos? What will philosophy ever be but the roaring of the end?

There must be departments of thought, just as there must be departments of history, and departments of mathematics, W. says. The university must be a place kept apart from capitalism, and from the ravaging of the world by capitalism. The university must remain a utopian space, if thought is to survive; if hope is to survive.

Because without philosophy there is no hope, W. says. Without thought, you can only return to the pell-mell of suffering from which thought begins.

In his dream, W. says, I am having one of my terrible nosebleeds. Blood running from my nose. Blood pooling in my philtrum, and along the top of my lips, my great fat lips …

In his dream, I am laughing, and blood runs back into my throat as I laugh. And then he hears them, my last words, spoken as blood runs from the corners of my mouth: I am become capitalism, destroyer of worlds.

Really, philosophy is only a training in despair, W. says. A training in the horror of the world!

The only way to think is with a man-trap shut around your ankle, W. says. With an ice-pick buried in your head!

He can't get through to his athletes, W. says. He can't make them understand the gravity of philosophy.

His sports science students lack a sense of the eschaton, of the end times, W. says. They lack any sense of millenarian eschatology. How can he make them understand that there is no hope?

His students are too full of health to despair, W. says. They exercise too much, jogging into the seminar room in their sports kits, with towels round their necks.

He misses the old days, W. says, before his college closed the humanities, when his philosophy students had to be forcibly restrained from throwing themselves from lecture hall windows. He misses the lamentations he used to hear in his tutorials, and the student keening that used to resound down the corridors of his department.

He's lost in marking, W. says. Piles and piles of it! He blocks out the horror of marking every year, he says. And this year it's worse than ever. It's like being in a bath filled with shit.

Maybe there's something wrong with his essay titles, W. says. Bela Tarr is the most important philosopher of our times. Discuss: the sports science students seem to struggle with that. And they object about being examined on Krasznahorkai's novels on a badminton ethics module. But Krasznahorkai is obsessed with ethics, W. tells them. Krasznahorkai writes about nothing but ethics!

He's been officially reprimanded for his teaching, W. says. Making his students watched Endgame over and over again has no relevance to badminton ethics, he's been told.

And they don't want to hear any more Jandek. Actually, he doesn't want to hear anymore Jandek, W. says. He can't bear it. But he thinks Jandek's good for his students, W. says.

The Essex postgraduates never succumbed to left-wing melancholy, W. says. They never thought that history was at an end, or that there could be no alternative to capitalism. Some of them, it is true, advocated a kind of hyper-capitalism, a turbo-capitalism, which would accelerate capitalism to its end. Some of them held out for a capitalism-gone-beserk, a deranged capitalism, that would destroy half the world as it destroyed itself. But the Essex postgraduates never lost faith in the utter transformation of the world, W. says. They never supposed that politics could be anything other than all-enveloping. They never thought politics could mean anything but a total revolutionary project …

Politics was the horizon of all philosophical thought: the Essex postgraduates were sure of that, W. says. All philosophical roads were also political roads: of that, they were certain. Their most intense thoughts were political thoughts, W. says. Their most intense friendships were political friendships. Everything is political: the Essex postgraduates knew that, W. says. Life is politics: that's what the Essex postgraduates understood.

Political despair: that's what we should guard against, W. says. Political defeatism.

The danger is that we are love the loss of politics, W. says. That we are happy with it; that we depend on it. That we love Britain, even as we pretend to hate it. That we love our own inertia, our attachment to failure.

Didn't Benjamin warn us of left-wing melancholy?, W. says. Didn't he fear that what interests us least is the possibility of politics?, he says. The danger is that we no longer believe in politics. That we do not hate capitalism strongly enough! That we do not hate Britain with sufficient strength!

How can we transform despair into hope?, W. wonders. How, a sense of the end of politics into the dawn of politics?

How did I put up with Manchester for all those years?, W. wanders. How come the city didn’t get to me, destroy me? ‘I wandered through that part of myself called Spain’, wrote Jean Genet in his Thief’s Journal. I wandered through that part of myself called Manchester: isn’t that how I thought of it?, W. says. Manchester is part of me, and not I a part of it: isn’t that what I said to myself?

I’ve always been a solipsist, W. says. I’ve never been part of anything. I’ve been involved in the world. I was reading Kafka, wasn’t I? Reading, and writing – in my own way. Trying to write. Failing to write. But continuing to write regardless.

I had my bedsit, W. says. I drew the city around me like a cloak. And when I graduated, I stayed on the plain of Manchester, lost on those plain, a man without ambition, a man without significance. What did I think I was going to do? I was dreaming of internal exile, W. knows that. I was dreaming of going inside, and never coming out.

He sees me, in his mind's eye, as a kind of Lenin, W. says.

The ideal revolutionary must submit himself wholly to the collective will, Lenin argued. A will that barely understands itself! That hardly knows what it wants! The militant can have no personal life, no feelings or attachments. What do ordinary concerns matter to him? What, sentiment, or vagueness?

Revolutionary purity: isn't that what Lenin sought? Revolutionary intransigence! The plough of the revolution must turn the world over … The people must be drenched in their own blood …

Because the people have no idea of what they want, according to Lenin, W. says. The people have no understanding of the collective will. So the revolutionary leader has to decide what to do on their behalf. The revolutionary leader has to massacre half the people, on their behalf …

It's for your own good! It's what you want!: Isn't that what I say to myself as I've ruined his career, W. says. You want to destroy yourself! You want to go under!: isn't that what I whisper to myself when I see W.'s former friends turning from him.

But I want the world to go under, too, W. says: he can see that. I also want to destroy the world, but in the name of no world to come. I am Lenin gone mad, W. says. A Lenin who wants nothing but destruction. God knows, I've destroyed his life, W. says.

We must watch out for the Kehre, for the turning point, W. says. We must watch out for the kairos, for the moment of conversion. We must watch out for the moment of History …

The trick of politics is knowing when to ask, according to Debord, W. says. You have to study the logic of politics. You have to learn lessons from it. And, sometimes, you have to set the rules yourself, and follow those rules through to the end.

We need a strategy! We need tactics! We need to aim our blow, as Clausewitz said, on the centre of gravity of the whole war. And it is a war, W. says. Politics is war, at the end of times.

I need to involve myself with something larger than me, W. says. With some kind of greater cause. Something I could live for – that would envelop all of my life. Something I could die for – can I imagine that? A cause that I might die for?

Actually, W. has always suspected that I am something of a fanatic – that if I found my cause- some kind of monstrous Hindu cause, then the maniac within would at last find release. I would go on some mad jihad to bring the apocalypse, W. says.

He sees me in his mind's eye, W. says, wading through blood, grinning. He sees me, like a child soldier gone beserk in the jungle. He sees me, laughing with blood-stained teeth, like a hyena feasting on a corpse. He sees me, blood running back into my mouth as I laugh ,,,

He has always understood me to be a kind of Bartleby of politics, W. says. 'I would prefer not to': that's what my indifference to social questions says, W. says. Or, better: 'fuck off, I'm eating'.

Of course, he would prefer not to hang out with me, W. says. But he thinks that it is perhaps by spending time with someone who associates with no one (except him), and who has no real friends (except for him), that he might understand what politics might mean. That perhaps it is only by passing the day with someone who had failed to grasp even the most rudimentary of social rules, that he might discern the essence of politics.

'Vot vot': that's all Lenin could say, when his mind was destroyed by brain disease, W. tells me. 'Vot vot', to express agreement or disagreement, satisfaction or annoyance, as he was wheeled along in in a bath chair, wrapped in blankets, at his rest home. 'Vot-vot' to the visiting Trotsky, soon to be expelled from the Soviet Union; 'vot-vot' to Stalin, soon to become its absolute ruler.

Lenin's nurses trying to teach him the the word worker again, and the word revolution. His aides tried to tried to teach him the words peasant and people; they tried to teach him the words cell and congress. God knows, his wife even tried to get him to say kulak, a word he used to spit out in hatred …

What will be his last words?, W. wonders. What will he say, as his mind dissolves into mush? 'Lars's fault', he will gasp. 'Lars', he will say, when he can say nothing else. 'Lars, Lars, Lars …' 

W. looks through my notebooks. Notes on Robert Walser's confinement. Names and dates. Ah, very interesting, W. says. Didn't Walser volunteer to be taken into Herisau asylum?, W. says. Didn't he want to go there for the peace and quiet?

At the sanitarium I have the quiet that I need. Noise is for the young. It seems suitable for me to fade away as inconspicuously as possible.

One lies like a felled tree, and needs no limbs to stir about. Desires all fall asleep, like children exhausted from their play.

Walser was exhausted, W. remembers. He'd written himself out! He had nothing more to say! And there was no market for his feuilltons, W. says. He couldn't make a living. Why shouldn't the welfare state pick up the bill?

Notes on Celan's confinement. Of course, he was much worse off than Walser, W. says. He was much more ill!

'They're doing experiments on me', Celan said to a friend. 'They've healed me to pieces', he said to another.

And notes on Hoelderlin's confinement. Pallaksch, W. reads. - 'What does that mean?' Those were the words Hoelderlin repeated to himself in the 30 years he spent mad, I tell W. Pallaksch!, he sang out, as he played his piano madly. Pallaksch!, he cried up to the night, when he couldn't sleep for mania.

Internal exile. That was my solution to the problem of Britain, wasn’t it?, W. says. Expect nothing from the world! Sit life out! Go on the dole! On the sick! Claim to be seeing things!, hearing things! Claim to be in the grip of imaginary mental illnesses! Get yourself committed!, confined in a secure unit! Pull Robert Walser’s stunt! Enter the asylum because of the safety of the asylum! Dream away your life in a serene captivity!

But then there was Kierkegaard, W. says. Then, for some reason, K saved me. Either/Or: that was the book I came across in an Old Hulme jumble sale, I’ve told him that. Either/Or: that was the book which awoke me from my bohemian slumbers.

Of course, my type usually lose themselves in conspiracy theories and books about UFOs, W. says. My type loses itself in the collected works of Colin Wilson, and in Dennis Wheatley’s Library of the Occult. What was it about Kierkegaard? What was it about Either/Or?

Was it the infinite variations on the expression of despair of A., the pseudonymous author of the first part of Kierkegaard’s book, which impressed me?, W. wonders. Was it his pages of laments? Or was it the call to arms of B., the pseudonymous author of the second part of Kierkegaard’s book, which spoke to me? Was it B.’s exhortations to look at oneself in the mirror?

‘There comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask’, Kierkegaard has B. write. ‘Do you believe that life will always be mocked? Do you believe that you can sneak away before midnight in order to avoid it?’ Had I reached my midnight?, W. wonders. Had I finally unmasked?

Either a life of shit, or a life of thought: isn't that what I said to myself?, W. says. Either a life of living unreflectively in the shit, or a life thinking about the shit: wasn't that it? And so shit began to think about itself, W. says. Shit looked at itself in the mirror. And I came to embody the spirit of shit …

Plato is turning in his grave, W. says. Kant is spinning in his grave. Did Hegel see what was coming? Did Cassirer?

We are not the murderers of thought, W. says, but we are complicit in the murder. We're not the ones who will slit thought's throat – but we stood aside, and let it happen.

The philosophical apocalypse. The philosophical end of times. Will it be clear, now, at the end of its history, what philosophy, all along, had wanted to say?

Philosophy will end neither with a bang nor a whisper, W. says. Philosophy will end in a  kind of thundering silence, he says. With an anonymous rumbling, which paids no heed to us at all.

No one will remember us (no one will remember him), W. says. No one will know what we tried to do (what he tried to do), W. says. No one will know what he had to put with …

The times are changing, W. says. An epoch is ending.

W. has the terrible feeling that we are going to be its gravediggers, he says. That the pit we have dug for ourselves – the disaster of our careers, the ludicrous posturing of our lives as thinkers – is the grave into which philosophy itself will be lowered.

Philosophy can't survive the catastrophe, W. says. Philosophy is going to be destroyed with everything else: that's what he fears. The philosopher is a person of leisure, W. says. A person removed from everyday worries. And who will have leisure in the times to come?, he says. Who will be free from the worries of life in the midst of the apocalypse?

He has the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, W. says. The other day, he found himself weeping without reason. He felt overwhelmed by an unaccountable sadness, by a total melancholy that seemed to be without cause. W. felt drawn to watch his saddest films, he says, and listen to his saddest music.

Is this what Kierkegaard meant by dread?, W. wonders. Is this what Kierkegaard means by anxiety? But he’s not anxious about himself, W. says. It’s not his own existence which worries him, his own soul. Something’s changed in the world, he's sure of it. Any minute now, and will become clear to everyone. At any moment, it will be there for all to discern.

The train to Edinburgh, up the east coast.

He doesn't really know the North Sea, W. says. He doesn't really feel it. What lies across the water, for instance? He doesn't even know that … Denmark, I tell him. Travel east, and we'd reach Jutland, and the port of Esbjerg. Denmark! That's where the Vikings came from, W. says. — 'Your people, pillaging and marauding …'

Of course, I’ve always maintained that the Vikings have been misunderstood by history, W. says. They were a melancholy people, first and foremost, I’ve told him. A people of tungsing, of heavy-souledness, I’ve insisted.

The Vikings knew their time was over, I’ve told W. They knew that their Ragnarok was coming; that a new religion was coming that would sweep the old one away. It was because Christianity was coming to their northlands that they sailed to Holy Island and smashed the Abbey, I said to W. And it was a sense of their own posthumousness that drove them to pillage and maraud their way across Christian Europe.

And wasn’t it the same soul-heaviness which drove them to the New World, to settle in Newfoundland? Wasn’t it Viking heavy-souledness which led them southwards, down the coast of present-day North America, all the way to what became Mexico? They wanted to escape, I told W. To escape themselves! To leave themselves behind! that's why they founded Viking settlements along the edge of East Africa, and in pockets of India where blue-eyed, heavy-souled natives claim ancestry from lost Danish colonies.

Of course, there’s a fundamental difference in our philosophy of walking, W. says. The Jewish walker walks forward, W. says. A trivial point, but one too often lost on the Hindu. Because the Hindu walks in circles, W. says. The Hindu only ever walks round and round!

For the Jew, W. says, every walk is an exodus, a leaving behind of the house of bondage. For the Jew, every walk is a politica act, a determined effort to found a new community in leaving behind slavery, to journey together away from Egypt. For the Hindu, however, the walk is only ever cosmological, W. says. — 'You set out to come back again! You go forth only to return!'

It's like the wheel of rebirth, W. says. It's like the turning of the Four Ages. History, for the Jew, has only one direction, even if, in the end, it points beyond history. Only one direction — and so, for the Jewish walker, we are always walking towards Canaan.